The Eyes of my Regret
by Neko Kuroban
Summary: Whatever happened after Zeus's disguised seduction of Callisto?


**Author's Note: **Written for my brother. Now maybe you will surrender my book with the print of Zeus and Callisto – the library wants it back.

Anyway, to anyone but my brother, I'm going to take a step of faith and assume some sort of familiarity from the reader with Callisto's tale – specifically, the part where Zeus disguises himself as Artemis to seduce Callisto.

_Always at dusk, the same tearless experience,  
The same dragging of feet up the same well-worn path  
To the same well-worn rock;  
The same crimson or gold dropping away of the sun  
The same tints, – rose, saffron, violet, lavender, grey  
Meeting, mingling, mixing mistily;  
Before me the same blue black cedar rising jaggedly to  
a point;  
Over it, the same slow unlidding of twin stars,  
Two eyes, unfathomable, soul-searing,  
Watching, watching, watching me;  
The same two eyes that draw me forth, against my will  
dusk after dusk;  
The same two eyes that keep me sitting late into the  
night, chin on knees  
Keep me there lonely, rigid, tearless, numbly  
miserable –  
The eyes of my Regret._

**_- _"The Eyes of my Regret", Angelina Weld Grimke**

Callisto wakes with a start, momentarily uncertain of her surroundings. That's not something she usually experiences – under normal circumstances, she knows exactly where she is: curled between Dai and Tion, her fingers buried to the knuckles in the ebony fur of a hound's neck, a goddess – hers – sleeping not too far away. It was expected, routine. She was used to it. Now, however, she found herself lying in the overgrown grass of the valley, with nary a stitch of clothing on, bits of grass snarled in her untamed hair.

She imagines that she looks like a tramp.

Echo used to stain her lips with the juice of berries. Some nights, she would return, the crimson stained and smeared. "Where were you?" One of their number would whisper, perhaps easily falling into step beside her – Callisto had never done this herself, but she imagined that it must have occurred, when she and her lady

(_her pure maiden virgin whore perpetual adolescent girl-goddess with the calloused hands and the sun-gilded skin and the cool pink lips)_

were walking ahead, Artemis's feet light where hers were weighted with… not mortality, but p'raps lack of divinity.

She recalls Echo flashing a taut smirk and tilting back her pretty dark head, as if to say _thank you for being in on my sin. _She doesn't say that though, only smiles that smug secret smile that never failed to irritate Callisto, and a few days later, Echo is gone, her collection of glass baubles remaining and her name unspoken but on everyone's mind. Callisto must have stolen a half-dozen glances at Artemis that day, feeling ancient near the girl. She was only six years older – she had been nine when she had been entered into the child's service, a gift to the lady of the silver bow from Lord Chronion. Her mother had been thrilled, Callisto remembered faintly, struggling to recall a time when her world had not revolved around this golden-haired creature whose fair brow revealed every emotion that flittered across it, a young woman who did not give a damn what anyone thought of her, a teenage girl who still could not keep from crying when her stepmother's quick temper clashed against her own sharp tongue.

She tries to remember a time when Artemis had not hung the moon, and she fails.

"Callisto!" Dai's voice.

She freezes and glances for her clothes, spying them thrown, haphazard, over a rock.

"Cally!"

Wincing at the use of the familiar – Dai insisted it was sweet, Callisto fiercely disagreed – she gets to her feet. She lowers herself into the crisp, clear river water just as the other nymph comes through the overgrown plants, into the clearing. "'Lo." Callisto says, enjoying the numbing sensation of the waist-deep water against her skin. Her legs hurt, she recognized distantly, and her inner muscles are slightly sore from the reverent attention – attentions she had never expected, never even dared to imagine, to receive – bestowed unto her.

Dai tilts her head to the side, examining her intently. Her eyes widen. "Callisto… you look as if…" Her voice hitches in her throat as she speaks: true worry for her friend.

Callisto hopes that the look she gives Dai is cool, revealing nothing. "I didn't enjoy the affections of a man last night." _Please don't let her know,_ she prayed, not knowing quite whom she invoked. What kind of god would listen to a foolish little nymph who broke her vows of chastity, not even for a man, but for the virgin goddess she had sworn herself to?

Mercifully, Dai turned away at last. "Are you coming?" She asks, unknowingly echoing words from the previous night, words that had been the only signal Callisto needed to follow the lithe, toned form away from the encampment.

Callisto nods and rinses her hair until she is sure that her folded mahogany locks are free from the fragments of grass. She walks onto the pebbled bank, donning her clothes with a speed that surprises her. She would not have minded sunning herself dry, but lingering would have perhaps been an admission of her own guilt.

**XXXXX**

Their light morning meal is not a strained affair. For some reason, she had imagined that it would be. There was flatbread and vino left over from the previous night – it had been some kind of a gift to the goddess and she was nothing if not generous, and perhaps they had been drunk last night. Callisto's mind had certainly been awhirl, possibly because of the wine, but mostly due to _her. _She glances over, to check the blonde's expression. Artemis seems pleased, content and happy, but she does not seem to think incredibly much of the breakfast, and Callisto finds herself wondering what she is accustomed to in her father's bronze-floored palace. They are sharing a flask and as those pale lips take a quick sip, she thinks Artemis is trying to break her.

Belatedly, she realizes everyone is laughing. Someone had made a remark, either witty or inane – either could draw gales of laughter. Dai was giggling, even the serious Aerie chuckled. The fair-crowned goddess is giving voice to her merriment, clear eyes bright with mirth, sunlight catching in her white-gold hair.

Unsteadily, Callisto wonders if it was just a dream.


End file.
